Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  As the years went on, changes for the worse occurred in his financial position, the value of his inherited property dwindled almost to zero, and he came to be dependent on his pen for an income.

  These and many other particulars of her father’s life and character Austin learned from Mary Smith in the course of quiet walks in the open spaces of North London, and quiet sittings in humble tea-shops.

  She liked to talk of her father, and of the rambling seventeenth-century farm-house under the hill at Port Jacob. But of herself she spoke little, and Austin waited with infinite patience till she should begin to feel that he was her friend, and that self-revelation would come.

  It came at last, suddenly, in a rush of passionate feeling, when physical weakness had lessened her power of self-restraint. Her work in the Refuge had begun to tell upon her. She had been suffering from excruciating headaches, the headaches of anæmia, and in one of their evening walks Austin found her silent and languid, and soon tired. He made her sit upon a bench in a solitary part of the park, and he waited quietly while she rested. She was deadly pale, and presently when she began to talk he found that she was on the verge of hysteria. Then it was that he heard her story of the woman from whom she had fled a few hours before he found her, jetsam from the sea of wicked London. Then for the first time he knew from what foul depths she had escaped. The woman had found her lying on a bench on the Embankment, absolutely starving. She had been turned out of her lodgings nearly a week before, and she had wandered about Chelsea and Battersea penniless and helpless, till she had drifted somehow to the Embankment near Blackfriars. And it was in the cold dawn that the woman had found her — a kindly creature, stout and prosperous-looking, with a pleasant voice, in which she expressed compassion for this poor wanderer, and offered her shelter and food. She was not rich, she said, but she had a comfortable home, and she loved to share her comforts with those who were poorer. She took the wanderer to her house half dead, and only able to creep by her side — a decent-looking house in a narrow street, hidden in a labyrinth of streets old and new. All that followed was like a dream. There was food — a comfortable bed — a bath — clean linen — all things decent. And there this lonely creature was allowed to lie and rest for days and nights that seemed long, and the restfulness of those long days and nights was luxury for the tired limbs, the aching feet, the burning head. When she questioned her benefactress, asked for her help in getting a place as a servant, or work of any kind, no matter how humble, she was told that there was no need for hurry. She had to get her strength back, and then no doubt something could be found.

  “The fact is, I am getting very fond of you,” the woman told her, “and I should like to keep you with me in this comfortable home.”

  Mary had noticed that the woman locked the door of her room when she left her, and this was frightening.

  She had tried her door several times, and had always found it locked. The woman laughed when she asked her why this was done.

  “Girls are capricious,” she said. “You might take it into your head to run away.”

  Then came the horror of it all.

  She had fallen asleep over her needlework, and it seemed the dead of the night. Her candle had burnt out, and the room was dark. She heard the key turn in the lock, and saw a light under the door, and then she heard her friend’s voice soft and conciliatory. “Remember she’s quite the lady,” and a rough voice answered, “Gammon and spinach,” and the door was opened and a man came in, carrying a candle; a big burly man, with a red face — a man who looked like a farmer, and who exhaled that compound of stables, cowhouse, and pigsty, which indicates agricultural surroundings.

  And then came a scene of terror and despair. The man talked to her in speech that she had never heard before, with brutality that she had never known before. She ran towards the door, but the key was inside now, and he turned it before she could get there. He caught her by the arm, and held her as if in a vice, the thin arm pinioned by his broad rough hand. She might have seen such men, carters or ploughmen, on the Cornish farms but such a man had never touched her.

  She tried to wrench her arm from a grasp that hurt her as if it had been red-hot iron. She shrieked for help, but in that house a woman’s shriek counted for nothing. He tried to kiss her. She felt the hot coarse lips upon her face, and horror gave her strength to beat him off. A cloud came across her eyes, her brain began to swim, and she dropped in a heap upon the floor, with just power to hold her outstretched arms above her head in an attitude that expressed frantic terror.

  The man moved away ever so little, looking down at her curiously.

  “I seem to have got into the wrong box,” he grumbled. “Stand up, lass. I’m not a tiger. Perhaps you don’t quite know where you are, or your manners would be more suitable.”

  “I thought I was with a kind woman who took pity upon me when she found me starving in the street.”

  “Uncommon kind. Oh, you poor creature!”

  And then he told her in his rough speech what the house was — and when she implored him to let her out of the room, and out of that accursed house, he took pity upon her and was kind.

  “You’d never get out by yourself,” he said. “You’ve fallen into a trap that doesn’t open easy. But I’ve got daughters of my own — two of the prettiest girls in the West Riding, and I’ll do what I can to take a modest wench out of the pit of hell! Put on your hat, lass, and come along o’ me.”

  Her hands shook so that he had to help her with her hat and coat, and then he took her down the stairs through a dimly-lighted passage to the street door, where a woman — the kind woman of the Embankment — came out of a room close by and tried to stop them.

  There was an altercation, violent words on either side, while Mary Smith hung mute and trembling on the Yorkshireman’s arm. After a torrent of abuse, the woman tried actual violence, tore Mary’s hat off, and caught her by the hair.

  “I’ll spoil your beauty, you ungrateful cat.”

  “Open that door, you old harridan,” roared the farmer. “And do it quick, before I whistle for the police.”

  He had put the girl’s hat on her head again, roughly but kindly. He took her up in his arms as if she had been a child, and held her on his shoulder while the woman opened the door, which was bolted and chained, and then he went lightly down the steps with that frail figure held securely with his right arm.

  “I feel like the Good Shepherd,” she heard him mutter. After this he did what he could for her — wanted to give her money, which she refused, and then left her near King’s Cross, telling her that if anyone followed her from that evil house, she had only to put herself in the charge of a policeman. He was going back to Yorkshire by the early morning train, he told her. He had had a sickener.

  This was the story Mary Smith told her benefactor, in snatches of speech, and with heart-breaking sobs, as she sat on the bench in the deserted side-walk of the People’s Park. There was very little attraction for the people in that narrow walk between young limes, and this evening Mary and her friend had it all to themselves.

  “I wanted to tell you,” she said, “I wanted you to know the depth of my degradation.”

  “There was no degradation — the man was right. You were a helpless creature caught in a trap. Forget all that horror, Mary, or think of it as something that another woman suffered. You are going to be a new woman and begin a new life. Forget it all.”

  “Do you think one can ever forget? It is never out of my thoughts. It comes back to me in my sleep, a horrible dream. I feel that man’s grasp upon my arm, and I try to scream, but my throat is dry and no sound comes. I shall never forget.”

  She grew calmer by and by, and she told him that work, nothing but work, could help her. Mrs. Gurdon was trying to get a situation for her — but it seemed very difficult.

  IV

  YES, it was difficult. Mrs. Gurdon was full of compassion for Mary Smith. She admired her and believed in her, and she had worked hard in her behalf
— had answered advertisements, and called upon agents, who professed themselves able to find places for governesses, companions, and lady-helps of every grade. But if it was difficult to find a situation for a young woman with a character, it was still more difficult to find acceptance for a young woman whose only reference was from the matron of a rescue home. The agent shrugged her shoulders and sighed — the case was hopeless.

  “The very word ‘refuge’ would finish the business,” she said. “And indeed it would do me harm even to mention such a case. I don’t think you know the delicacy required in the conduct of such an agency as mine. With my superior connections I cannot be too careful.”

  It was in vain to plead. Mary Smith was not to be thought of. Even as a lady-help, to wait upon an invalid, and dust rooms, and polish furniture, and make herself generally useful, there was no place for a woman out of a refuge. Mrs. Gurdon pleaded in vain. If her protégée was not a sinner, she had herded with sinners, and she was impossible! That was the word Mrs. Gurdon heard wherever she applied. Mary Smith was impossible.

  She told Austin Sedgwick of her hopeless failure, when Mary had been half a year in the Refuge, and had shown herself staunch in her willingness to work, her ability, and her readiness to face the battle of life where it was hardest.

  “Let me go as a general servant, a mere drudge,” she said.

  “Oh, you don’t know how hard it would be — or the danger of it: unless I could put you with good people — and they are so rare. If it comes to the worst, I might get you a place as a parlour-maid — domestic servants are scarce — and people are not so particular as they used to be.”

  Austin heard the result of Mrs. Gurdon’s efforts with regret for the sake of the girl who wanted to be of use in the world, to work, and to forget.

  “Well, my good soul, all you can do is to make her useful where she is, and to trust in Providence.”

  “I don’t see my way out of it,” the matron said despondingly. “You oughtn’t to go on paying for her — and she oughtn’t to be here any longer. It isn’t a fit place for her.”

  “She is safe. That is something. As to the cost of her maintenance — it’s not worth a thought.”

  But the girl herself cost him many thoughts. Mrs. Gurdon was right. The Refuge was not a fitting home. Mary Smith ought not to be a dweller under that roof. It was well that she had found shelter there in her desolation; but to make that house her home, to live there and work there among fallen women, with no better hope than to succeed Mrs. Gurdon, years hence, as matron — to spend her life among sinners — that was too horrible to contemplate.

  There were the colonies. There were countries to which she might go, leaving her history behind her. There was all that vast new world, where she need have no higher recommendation than her education and her charming personality. If the worst came to the worst, he must find friends for her in Australia or Canada, and he must help her to emigrate.

  In the meantime he saw her as often as he could spare an afternoon from his social engagements, and sometimes when he had pledged himself to his sisters to meet one of their sweet girl friends in Eaton Square, he was sitting opposite Mary Smith, in some humble tea-shop in Somers Town, talking of the books they knew and the things they had thought about. She was quite at her ease with him now, and would talk of anything but herself and her sad young history. Never since that afternoon of hysterical distress had she told him anything about herself, or alluded to her revelation of that hour.

  It was while he was talking to her, this afternoon in early June, when sunshine and summer air were coming in at the open door, near which they sat, and when the suburban street looked almost gay, that he stopped point-blank in the midst of an animated conversation.

  “Have you ever done much reading aloud?” he asked her.

  “I used to read to my father after his sight began to fail. I had to read to him for long hours, and sometimes very late at night, when he was sleepless. I was useful to him then, and I think he was beginning to care for me.”

  She broke down suddenly, and covered her face with her hands to hide the streaming tears.

  “I’m afraid I have touched an old wound,” Austin said gently.

  “A wound that can never be healed. He was beginning to love me. Every day brought us nearer together, and I left him — just when he wanted me most. He had no one else — no one but servants.”

  “Try to forget.”

  “No, no. I want to remember. What can I give him but remorse and bitter tears? He died in little more than a year after I left him. We might have been happy in that last year, if I had stayed.”

  She dried her tears, and begged Austin to forgive her for making a scene.

  It was not much of a scene. They were almost alone in the little shop. There was only a youth with his sweetheart, whispering and giggling together at the farthest table. The shopkeeper was sitting behind her counter, half asleep, and nodding over a piece of crochet.

  “I had a reason for asking you that question,” Austin told her. “If you are a good reader and can read for three or four hours at a stretch, I think I could get you the post of reader to an invalid — an elderly man, who was seriously injured by a fall from his horse thirty years ago, and who has been only half alive since that accident. It would not be an onerous position, as you would have nothing to do but read aloud whenever he was in the humour to listen to you — dull books, sometimes perhaps, but never stupid or vulgar books. You would have no nursing to do, no sick-room attendance. His valet and a footman wait upon him, move him from room to room, and minister to all his wants.”

  “Such an occupation would be delightful, but would such a man take me without a character — take me from a Refuge?”

  “That would make no difference with him. He has not a common mind. He would be interested in your story, if you would let me tell him.”

  “I don’t think I could bear that.”

  “Well, if it must be so, I will leave you to tell your own story, when you come to understand the man.”

  “Is he a friend of yours? Have you known him a long time?”

  “All my life. He is my uncle, my mother’s brother, but as wide as the poles asunder in his view of life. She is a good woman, a God-fearing Christian, and a staunch churchwoman, but hide-bound with conventions. He is an eccentric, an agnostic, but broad-minded and noble in his contempt for small things. It happens curiously that his last reader, his reading girl, as he called her, has taken it into her head to go to Canada where her future husband is waiting for her, and he wants someone to fill her place. I think you would suit him, if you can read as well as I fancy you can.”

  “It seems too good — much too good,” the girl answered sadly.

  “But you would like it.”

  “There is hardly anything I should like so well. Such good fortune could only come in a fairy-tale.”

  “I told you that life is not all gloom. There are flashes of sunlight — and I hope this may mean lasting sunshine. My uncle is rich and generous — capable of doing great kindnesses. If you will be ready for me at half-past four to-morrow afternoon, I will drive you to Warburton House, and you shall see him. He is always at home, poor soul, fastened to his ‘mattress grave,’ as Heine called it. I will telephone to him on my way home, and prevent his making any engagement till he has seen you. I know you would suit him.”

  It was his knowledge of the man rather than of the girl that gave him this assurance. Mary Smith had just the personality to please a fastidious eccentric. Her refinement, her beauty — so subdued in colour, so delicate in form — that it could never be accepted as beauty by the vulgar — a certain gracefulness in all her movements — were attributes to which Conway Field would give their full value. He was a connoisseur in humanity as he was in art, and as difficult to please in the manners and appearance of the people about him, as he was in the modelling of a Chelsea shepherdess or the miniature painting in a Book of Hours.

  Austin called at Warbur
ton House next morning, in time to see his uncle at his breakfast of diaphanous toast and weak tea.

  Mr. Field gave him a finger.

  “You are early, my dear boy. Don’t apologize. I am always glad to see you. You are one of the few, the very few, that I am glad to see.”

  “I think I have found you a reading girl.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. My wretched eyes are tired to death with reading by lamplight. Can she read?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I am tired of hoping — and is she a girl?”

  “Two-and-twenty at most.”

  Mr. Field sighed.

  “I have found that those who owned to two-and-twenty were my idea of five-and-thirty — but that doesn’t matter. I don’t want extreme youth — only I have to live some part of my life with the creature, and I sicken at the sight of a clumsy figure and coarse hands. Look at my reading girl, as you go out — look at the refinement, the simplicity — I have had a long procession of reading girls and have never found simplicity or refinement — pretty faces often, freshness and bloom sometimes, but no simplicity. The pretty ones were all conceited, and presumed upon the consciousness of charms which their vanity magnified. Never refinement — never simplicity — but plenty of affectation, a miserable reproduction of the society girl’s manner, picked up across a counter, or in a milliner’s showroom. Oh, those girls, officious, troublesome, stupid! If your protégée has none of these faults, she is a rara avis.”

  “She has one fault.”

  “Not red hair?” with a shudder.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Not a chronic cold in her head?”

  “No, no.”

  “What is her name?”

  “Mary Smith.”

  “Thank God. I have been sickened by a Ruby and a Gladys, a Lily and a Beryl. Never a Jane or a Sarah. Mary is a name I love. Smith is at least inoffensive.”

  “I believe this girl may suit you. Her only drawback is that she has never been in a situation of any kind, and she can give no references.”